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It’s been more than a year since I posted to this blog. I could give you an excuse or three, but I just wasn’t inspired didn’t give a shit. But I have returned, and I bring you bloggy goodness from way back in 2010.
The year 2010 was ugly. Like waking up in bed with a hangover next to a naked Barney Frank in a Michelle Obama mask ugly! For me, it started out with a swift kick to the bait and tackle when my supervisor, Eeyore (as he was nicknamed), called me to the conference room and proceeded to tell me that The Company was heading in a new direction and my services would no longer be needed. However, the written notice of my termination said the reason was “due to ongoing inadequate performance over a long period of time.” I don’t know what Eeyore’s donkey chow-eating ass considers “inadequate” or “long period of time,” but I was only written up once in October 2009 for leaving several tickets in a queue untouched for a day or two. Three months does not a “long period of time” make, especially since I was employed with The Company for more than five and a half years. It wasn’t normal practice for me to ignore tickets either, but the migration of an archaic web server broke many company-provided cgi scripts, and it was my job to fix them… on top of my normal load of handling four separate ticket queues by myself. Whatever.
I went back to my office, packed up all my office flair, and grabbed LDriver to head home. Just like dealing with a family death, there are stages of grieving when you lose a job. I think I was done with denial by the end of the first day. Anger ended and acceptance began at sunrise the following day when I realized I didn’t have to make that soul-crushing commute to Seattle ever again. Of course, depression started when living on unemployment (a.k.a. “unenjoyment”) and finding a new job closer to home became more and more difficult. It was enough to make me enter a seldom-expressed stage of grieving: revenge!
On the world stage, a giant earthquake leveled parts of Haiti in January. It was the third deadliest earthquake of all time, and it was rumored to be caused by a runaway Prius. This led Toyota to recall over 8 million vehicles for several reasons, including magical pedal-pushing floor mats, sticky accelerators, an anti-lock braking virus, as well as general smugness and/or ugliness.
February brought a Super Bowl win to the Saints who beat the Colts. While Peyton Manning cried, Saints fans celebrated the best thing to happen to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. February was also the start of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, BC. Being only 100 miles away from Oak Harbor, I really wanted to at least visit Vancouver, but my jobless situation prevented discretionary spending. One positive in not having a job is I could watch as much Olympic coverage as possible on NBC. In further sports news, Tiger Woods gave a televised apology for his infidelities. This made everyone’s jaw drop to the floor simultaneously, causing another giant earthquake, this time in Chile.
In March, I was fully on the job search hamster wheel, rewriting résumés and cover letters, scouring the State’s WorkSource site as well as other online job listings. In Washington, you have to make three job search contacts each week — and keep a contact log — in order to receive your weekly pittance. With a fair amount of free time on my hands, coupled with the occasional trips to the WorkSource office or job interviews, I had plenty of opportunities to go shooting with my camera. I took many photos during my jobless time, and I dumped nearly all of my shots on Flickr, and created a new blog at photography.wafwot.com. It’s a better way to spend a day than watching Bewitched and All in the Family reruns, or FOX News which was covering the Obamacare politics pretty heavily in March.
Princess Pelosi is infamous for saying crazy fucking shit, but her comments about Obamacare to the National Association of Counties stating “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy,” ranks up there as the stupidest things ever said by a human being, let alone a politician. Clearly the Botox in her Liberal face has poisoned her mosquito-sized brain. Seriously, Pelosi’s “pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it” remark makes Jessica Simpson’s Chicken of the Sea comments sound genius! Of course, by the end of March, King Obama signed the bill into law even though the majority of Americans didn’t want it. Out like a lamb, my fat white ass.
April saw yet another giant earthquake, this time in China. The Earth must have been mad at humanity in 2010, because a volcano under Eyjafjallajökull (which is Icelandic for “how the fuck do I say that?“) erupted, grounding planes throughout most of Europe. Not to be outdone in the shock and awe department, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, sending thousands of gallons of crude oil per hour into the ocean. BP initially lied about the severity of the spill; they’re British, they had to scale it down a bit. April also saw Apple’s release of the iPad, basically an expensive iPhone for people with giant hands, but without phone service. In Arizona, lawmakers passed SB 1070, which made being of Mexican descent illegal. Cops were instructed to start rounding up wetbacks and throwing them into concentration camps for extermination in August… so said MSNBC. White power, motherfuckers!
After three months of job searching, it was time for a change. Family genetics left me with a head of gray hair, and no one wants to hire an old fat-ass. So, while watching the 2010 Stanley Cup playoffs, I started applying Grecian Formula to my giant old man head. It took a few weeks to see my hair changing a nice shade of graphite, like I was rubbing pencil sharpener shavings on my scalp. And my head smelled like a book of burnt matches. Clearly this wasn’t working. So, I gave Tina my berries and went to the Wal-Mart for a box of women’s hair dye. Good God, what a scary ordeal that was! After leaving that color on my head for a twenty minutes, I looked like Ronald Reagan in 1981… but with less wrinkles. To me, I looked ridiculous. Good thing I have hats.
Overly concerned about the continuing flow of oil into the Gulf, our Supreme Overlord made a couple trips to Louisiana in May for some photo ops. The media was plastered with video showing Obama standing on the beach — surrounded by black globs of oil — staring benevolently out at the water. It was the least he could do between rounds of golf. Meanwhile, Congress held hearings about the spill, and suggested we melt down defective Toyotas and fashion a giant drain stopper. When the giant the giant bathtub plug was shot down, Congress decided to outlaw deep sea drilling. The way the Administration was acting, you’d have thought the Gulf crude was leaking into their morning bowl of Wheaties.
By June, I was about fed up with with the job search rut. I had interviews at several companies in Skagit County, and all but one said “no,” and that one didn’t say “no” wasn’t saying anything yet. Frustration and depression were setting in quickly, especially when the Flyers lost the Stanley Cup finals to Drunken Queef and the Chicago Blackcocks.
One position I applied for was for a network administrator at a local casino. I won’t say which casino, but it rhymes with “two day shit” if you say it real fast and put the emphasis on “day.” Their application wanted more personal information than a new car loan, which started me (and Tina) on a 10-day scavenger hunt. Things like driver’s license and Social Security number were easy. But they also wanted a copy of my criminal record, driving record, and high school diploma. High school diploma? Sweet baby Jesus, it’s been a quarter century since I’ve seen that! After turning the house upside down in a fruitless search, I called the school for a copy. They told me a replacement diploma would cost $25 and take a couple weeks. Just as I was about to give up, Tina finally found my diploma — the last item I needed — in the very last possible place it could have been. I spent several days polishing the turd that is my curriculum vitae, then emailed my application to a friend that worked at the casino. He printed the app and all the supporting documents and submitted it for me. After several weeks, I got a phone call for a job interview. My Ronald Reagan hair and I drove the 70 miles to Marysville for the interview, which was a bit ambiguous. You know how there’s more than one way to do things in much of life? It’s not any different in the IT world. Several of their questions could have had more than one answer and still be correct. However, you if you didn’t have their answer, it counted against you. I thought I did well, but found out that no one answered their interview questions correctly. This told them their questions were flawed, and they subsequently withdrew the position. Excellent.
I continued the three weekly job contacts into July, living my own personal Groundhog Day. The BP spill was still spewing oil into the Gulf. However, BP was finally able to stem the flow with something they called “LMRP,” which I think is a British acronym for Lick My Royal Posterior. With the well capped, America could now focus it’s full attention on more important things, like LeBron James‘ eeny, meeny, miny, moe game of where to play basketball, Lindsay Lohan‘s 14-day jail sentence, and the excitement of World Cup Soccer (yaaawwwn). I was still using my huge amounts of free time to take photos around Island and Skagit counties, until I got a phone call from that one company that hadn’t said no. It was nearly two months since I interviewed with them, and had written it off as another failure. But when they offered me the job over the phone, I gladly accepted without hesitation! I was happy to be employed again, but sickened by the fact that I had just helped Obama lower his jobless percentage.
August was a good month; I had a reason to wake up in the morning. I was hired as the IT Manager of an aerospace company. It sounded pretty cool until I realized it’s a start up company that hasn’t built a plane yet. They’re setting up the fabrication facility using the assets of a company they bought out of bankruptcy, and they didn’t even have an IT department yet. So, I am the manager of one (me), but it’s my job to build the IT department, and I like that idea a lot. With my second paycheck, I went to the local Sprint store and bought the EVO 4G. I had it rooted within four days of owning it.
Also in August, the East Coast was attacked by giant bedbugs which prompted NASA to extend the Space Shuttle program in order to plan an attack of planet Klendathu. Up in the panhandle of Florida, the Messiah and his family vacationed in Panama City on the Gulf Coast as a publicity stunt showing the waters were safe. To maintain his “first black president” hue, he went swimming with the crude oil globules. Unfortunately, the Gulf was oilier when Barry got out of the water, so the First Family finished their vacation in Martha’s Vineyard by playing golf and shopping. Obama also put a another woman on the Supreme Court, and Planet Blago was downgraded to Douchebag Blago.
By September, the midterm elections were coming to a head. Balack Osama and his Congress were about as popular as a hooker with cold sores, and they knew it. When they began campaigning in their home districts, they didn’t talk about Obamacare, they talked about being a witch or worshipping Aqua Buddha. In the entertainment industry, Tony Curtis died, the tragic victim of a runaway Toyota.
October was uneventful for me. I was living the dream with a full time job, and enjoying the work. I designed a logo for the company and built them a simple beginner web site for an Internet presence. At the company’s main offices, I was building new cubicles and computer systems for a contingent of Chinese engineers on work visas. I was also supervising new Cat 6 cable runs at the airport facility, built a Linux router/firewall, and deployed a new Asterisk phone system.
Elsewhere in the world, yet another earthquake off the coast of Sumatra killed over 400 people, terrorists in Yemen tried sending printer toner bombs to the U.S. via UPS, and a gaggle of Chilean miners trapped in a mine for 69 days were rescued with a giant mechanical tampon applicator. A bright spot was the news that the International Space Station surpassed the record for the longest continuous human occupation of space, unless you count John Dingell‘s white ass planted in his House seat for more than 55 years. What the hell kind of name is “Dingell” anyway? Sounds like a piece of shit stuck to the hairs of his mudcutter.
In November, I was invited to watch the Manny Pacquiao vs. Antonio Margarito fight on pay-per-view at my boss’ house. He had a $150 in bets against Pacquiao with a couple people at work. Needless to say, Pacquiao beat Margarito like a Mexican piñata, and broke his right orbital bone. Ouch. My boss paid his bet in $1 bills. Awesome.
Also in November, the Democrats were beaten like Margarito by the Republicans in the 2010 midterm elections. The jackasses lost the House majority, several Senate seats, some governorships, some state legislatures, and Dancing With the Stars. It was the biggest game of musical chairs since 1948, and the largest for any midterm election since 1938. If you listen very carefully, you can still hear Princess Pelosi crying in her Zinfandel.
Three days before Thanksgiving, it snowed in Western Washington, and everyone dropped a rectal plate. I was a little worried about the accumulating snow. Not because I can’t drive in bad weather, but because other people are complete retards when the pavement is anything but dry. When I left work, I put my truck in 4×4 low and headed out, adjusting my speed for the road conditions. Fifteen miles from home, got stuck in a long line of traffic. There was apparently an accident in Deception Pass that blocked the entire highway and snarled traffic for hours. A trip that normally takes me 40 minutes took ten minutes shy of 4 hours. Told you they were retards.
Then, while millions of Americans were cooking their junk at the airports in full body scanners, Tina and I went to Thanksgiving dinner at my boss’ house. The night before Thanksgiving it snowed again, but it was no trouble for my truck. We arrived right on time, had a great meal and enjoyed the visit. The very next day, Obama was punched in the mouth by a Latino man angry that the Administration was allowing Arizona to gas beaners. The resulting cut to King Hussein’s upper lip required 12 stitches.
December saw a federal judge in Virginia rule that Obamacare is unconstitutional. In response, the Justice Department said, “Nuh uh!” The 2010 Census numbers were released in December, showing that the U.S. population grew 9.7% to 308,745,538, the smallest increase since the 1930s. Was it a coincidence that the unemployment rate was 9.8% and the population increased 9.7%? The world may never know. In response howerver, Joe Biden said, “These new motherfuckers need to get a job to help America’s recovery.” Elsewhere, Obama dropped to his knees and blew the Republicans in order to hammer out and sign the GOP tax compromise bill, then repealed don’t ask, don’t tell to the delight of butt pirates everywhere. Hmmmm.
At work, the company sprung for a Christmas meal for all employees. The food was catered by Haggen Food in Burlington, but needed to be heated before serving. Not having a stove at the office, my boss planned on having his wife heat the food at his house which was only about a mile away. I asked why we just didn’t heat the food in the oven, and was told we don’t have an oven at the office. “Um, the hell we don’t. We have a 55-foot curing oven,” which I often refer to as the Jew Cooker. Needless to say, our Christmas meal was cooked in the Jew Cooker. Here’s a crappy cellphone picture.
And that about covers it. There was lots more that happened in 2010, but this is all I can muster in my glossed over Reader’s Digest edition. I, for one, am glad to see 2010 in history’s rear view mirror. Let’s hope 2011 is better for me and our troubled country. Peace, bitches.
